Dean:
Below are 3 pictures of a Rt95 in Massachusetts, south of the NH border. I travel this road at least twice a week. Two years ago the road was repaved & ever since then, the topcoat of pavement has been slowly coming off; but only under the painted stripes. In the first pictures, the disintegrating asphalt has been repaired, in in the last photo, the state hasn't gotten to that section as of yet. With all of the driving I do, I've never seen a road be destroyed under just the line paint, what would cause something like this to happen???
They maybe laid it over the old white stripes. The stripes are a different material/paint coat that should be removed and the new coat had nothing to attach to.
my guess only because I have had miles of black top installed on my properties.
I'm a little puzzled at the disappearing stripes. Normally, a water-based paint is applied as a primer coat. This is followed by a hot-applied thermoplastic stripe that practically lasts forever. Looks like the thermo stripe may not have been applied.
It looks to me like the contractor who performed the work may not have compacted the longitudinal joints adequately. Low density allows water to infiltrate the pavement, and can lead to "stripping" of the asphalt cement binder from the aggregates. A similar phenomenon often happens at the exchange of delivery trucks in front of the paver. If the machine is starved of material for a moment, there will be a segregated area that will strip or oxidize prematurely. End-load segregation is a regularly-occurring defect that can be remedied by good quality control, training and pride in workmanship. I sereved on a joint Industry/TxDOT task force to develop specs that address these issues with appropriate test procedures. My asphalt pavement association conducts workshops to help contractors and inspectors identify and remedy these problems.
Water infiltration into the pavement structure or subgrade is the #1 cause of alligator cracks & potholes, which lead to complete generalized failure of the roadway. Top quality design & construction practice, along with regular maintenance, is essential to ensure long service life of the pavement.
Thanks for the response Dean. The road is going to be repaved again, as they have started grinding away the top coat on the northbound side of I95.....just in time for summer weekend traffic. This isn't the first time that crappy road work has been done here in MA. A few years ago, Rt495, down where I live, was repaved & it was done so terribly, that it had to be ground down & repaved 6 months later. Unfortunately, that's just the way things are done up here.
Linear Mode
